


An Enigma, yet Home

by thewaterfalcon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Creature Fic, F/M, Gryffindor/Slytherin Inter-House Relationships, Mystery, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 17:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10341003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewaterfalcon/pseuds/thewaterfalcon
Summary: I need to thank two lovely people for their help with this story: my beta-who-is-so-much-more-than-a-beta RooOJoy. Sometimes I honestly don't know what I'd do without her; green hearts, sass, and snakey hugs! I love you, your mad beta skillz and your perfect writing (but mostly you)!!Also, my 'mentor'/fanfic-probation-officer goldensnitch18, who is a dear friend, fellow Paneville-shipper and writer of some of the most beautiful prose I've ever had the pleasure to read.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I need to thank two lovely people for their help with this story: my beta-who-is-so-much-more-than-a-beta RooOJoy. Sometimes I honestly don't know what I'd do without her; green hearts, sass, and snakey hugs! I love you, your mad beta skillz and your perfect writing (but mostly you)!!  
> Also, my 'mentor'/fanfic-probation-officer goldensnitch18, who is a dear friend, fellow Paneville-shipper and writer of some of the most beautiful prose I've ever had the pleasure to read.

 

* * *

 

 

“You really don’t care, do you?”

He looked her straight in the eye. “No.”

“Why?”

 

> “Because,” he muttered, shrugging, “why should I?”

He cocked his head slightly to the left, watching the way her long, tear-stained lashes batted up and down as she blinked. “Oh,” she replied, “you shouldn’t, I suppose.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

  1. Whirlwind.



 

Ron’s face was so close to the window he could feel the cool glass gently brush the tip of his nose.

 

“There it is.” George’s words were a gasp of wonder. “The bludgers wouldn’t be able to keep up with us on those, Freddie.”

 

“You can say that again,” Fred replied, his voice exuding the same calibre of awe as his twins’.

 

“Boys,” a third voice rang out, a beacon of familiarity, “come on now, we still need to visit Flourish and Blotts.” Molly Weasley’s tone lay somewhere between the vicinities of overtired and shrill, meaning it would be unwise, Ron knew, to delay the family’s progress any more than necessary. The three youngest Weasley boys allowed their eyes one final, longing look at the Nimbus 2000; it _was_ the coolest thing Ron had ever seen in real life, after all, and deserved to be admired as such, before all three turned regretfully away.

 

“Fred, where is the bag?” their mother asked, an edge of panic already beginning to emerge itself into her words.

 

“Bag?”

 

“The _bag_ , Fred. The one with the robes I _just_ bought you both in,” she answered. “Please tell me you have the bag?”

 

Ron knew this type of scenario well; the misplacing of important items was something of a regularity within large families, combined with his eleven-year-old less than average attention span, Ron simply had no desire to care about the location of Fred’s missing bag. Instead, he found himself turning rather abruptly back around to seek out at least one more glance at the Nimbus, only to find himself flung, rather haphazardly, onto the ground.

 

“Oof!”

“Hi!” the voice was unfamiliar, fairly high-pitched, and racked with delight.

 

“Umm, hi-AHH!” Ron’s reply cut in half by his own shocked cry, he had expected the owner behind the mystery _hi_ to be female, however, to look up and see a girl’s face only a few mere inches away from his own, was definitely _not_ what he had expected. The stranger was crouching in front of him, mouth open in a wide smile as she watched him. Her eyes were large, and set into a pale, heart-shaped face. Her hair was short, falling to the halfway point between her earlobe and shoulder, dark brown in colour, with a solitary half-an-inch thick streak of white which curtained the right of her face and, by Ron’s estimation, around his own age. She looked... _nice,_ Ron internally winced at his own assessment of her as soon as the thought had manifested. Girls were definitely, incredibly _not_ nice.

 

“Who are you?” Ron demanded, harsher than he intended. His lack of manners was driven by the bitterness he felt towards what, or rather _who_ had obviously been the cause of not only his fright but the stinging pain that was beginning to settle into his left shoulder.

 

“That’s rude,” the girl retorted, her smile faltering.

 

“You knocked me down!” Ron replied, incredulously. Her attitude already irritated him. _She_ was calling _him_ rude?

 

“Oh, yeah,” she said with an air of surprise, as though she had forgotten, “but I didn’t _mean_ to. Here, I’ll help you up,” she added, leaning back against her heels and standing up in one swift motion, before offering her hand towards a still slumped over Ron.

 

“Thanks,” he muttered, accepting her offer.

 

“You’re welcome,” she answered, brightly, “I’m sorry I knocked you over.”

 

Ron nodded. “Where were you going in such a hurry?”

 

“Nowhere.” Her wide smile was once again plastered upon her face, it caused her nose to wrinkle slightly, and Ron couldn’t help but feel something of a fascination with her. “Are you at Hogwarts?”

 

“This will be my first year,” Ron answered. “Are you?”

 

“I start next year. You’ll be in the same year as my-,” her words halted, and Ron failed to miss the slight gasp she made just before she stopped speaking.

 

“What?” Ron asked, utterly flummoxed by her words, or lack thereof. “Same year as your _what_?”

 

“I have to go.” This time Ron knew her smile wasn’t coming back. He watched as she turned on her heel, wondering for the merest second whether he should try and stop her, but just as quickly as she had appeared before, she was gone.

 

“Right, George you keep the bag then, and for _goodness sake,_ could the pair of you _please_ try and remember who is carrying what.”

 

“Yeah, all right Mum,” Ron heard George answer as he approached the small circle that encompassed Fred, George, Ginny and their mother.

 

“Alright, let’s get moving. Oh, I do wish your father could have come as well, although by the sounds of things it’s not just his department working overtime. He says the Magical Maintenance Department are so unhappy with their extra hours that there’s an actual whirlwind outside of all the windows.”

“A whirlwind,” Ron whispered slowly to himself, that was certainly one way to put it.

 

* * *

 

 

 

  1. Cumulonimbus.



 

“Psssst.”

 

The noise caused him to come to a confused standstill. Who on Earth would be trying to get his attention, here of all places?

 

Ungraciously stuffing a somewhat bemused looking rat hastily in a pocket of his jacket,  Ron glanced around his surroundings. The corridor was old and mouldy looking, and very much the same as most of the others located within the hotel portion of the Leaky Cauldron.

Eyes still narrowed, but after one more scout of his vicinity revealing nothing out of the ordinary, he had put the sound down to his imagination and began to continue his journey back to his room.

 

“Psssst.”

 

Okay, he _definitely_ hadn’t imagined that one. He knew Fred and George were both down in the bar, having just come from there himself, and that only really left Percy, and somehow, that didn’t seem plausible. Besides, if he were to make a guess, it had sounded a touch more female than male…

 

The giggle that followed confirmed Ron’s suspicions, that was clearly a girl’s giggle.

 

“Umm, hello?”

 

“Umm, hello?” Ron’s own words echoed back at him, followed by a chorus of the same high pitched snicker he had heard seconds before. “In here,” the voice said, louder and clearer this time, accompanied by the slight opening of a pair of white cupboard doors that Ron knew contained clean bedding and towels, having now retrieved Scabbers from the identical cupboard upstairs numerous times.

 

Cautiously, Ron lifted a hand and gently tugged at one of the cupboard’s handles, revealing the interior, not that there was much. As predicted, the shelves held a number of folded linens, a few cardboard boxes and a certain cross-legged, vaguely familiar face. Her hair had grown a great deal in the last few years since their first encounter, it now cascaded over her shoulders reaching her waist. Ron’s eyes were once more drawn to the streak of white still prevalently stark against her sea of dark brown locks.

 

“Hi!”

 

“If I’m remembering correctly, the last time you said ‘hi’ to me, you’d just knocked me over.”

 

“You are remembering correctly,” she smiled, causing her nose to wrinkle in the same way it had previously Ron mentally noted, before vaguely wondering why he noticed such a trivial characteristic. In truth, he wasn’t even sure whether Harry’s or his mother’s noses had anything discernable about them, therefore it made very little sense why he would have picked up on this stranger’s, for that’s what she was, nose’s habits.

 

“Right,” Ron began, clearing his throat, “why are you in a laundry cupboard?”

“Why not?” she replied, before uncrossing her legs and unfurling herself from the shelf. “It was getting a bit boring, though, come on!” With a soft tug on his sleeve, she began to walk away, leading them back through the corridor that Ron had just walked down.

 

He was all at once bemused, slightly on edge, and nervously delighted. His eleven-year-old self had struggled to make head nor tail of the strange girl who had flown into him and then disappeared after what had appeared to be her own almost-slip up. But slip up of _what,_ exactly?

 

He’d looked, more eagerly than he’d ever care to admit to anyone, for her during the past year. She’d told him that was the year she was due to start Hogwarts, and although he’d missed the Sorting Ceremony due to the slight hiccup involving his father’s flying car, he had been fairly confident that he’d spot her at one point or another during the year.

 

“I thought you said you were starting Hogwarts last year,” Ron began, confused as the girl led him down a set of stairs he was unfamiliar with - his best guess being that they were nearer the back of the building, “and where are we going? And why were you waiting for me in a cupboard?”

 

“So many questions,” she replied, before shooting him a sly grin and placing her left index finger vertically over her mouth, indicating quiet. She continued down a few more steps until they were standing on a landing in front of a set of sturdy doors that Ron was fairly certain must lead outside.

 

“Are you mad? I can’t just leave, and where are your parents, are you staying here too?”

  
She scoffed. “My parents wouldn’t be caught dead staying in a place like this, they think it’s for peasants.”

 

“Oh right, well, thanks very much.”

 

“I didn’t say _I_ wouldn’t stay here,” she replied, shooting him a glance over her shoulder. She continued with a whispered laugh, “I happen to like peasants.”

 

“Charming.”

 

“I know I am, now come on.”

 

Ron sighed, “I can only be gone an hour at the most.”

  
“Okay.”

 

“And you have to tell me your name.”

 

She paused, the door was half open, one of her legs already outside. “I can’t tell you that.”

 

“Why?” Ron asked, flummoxed. Part of him wondered what was keeping him from just turning around and hot-footing it to his room, but something stopped him, grounding him to this moment, and to her.

 

“It’s a secret,” she said, simply, before scooting out of the door completely “Don’t you trust me?” she added.

 

“No!” he replied, before he too exited the Leaky Cauldron’s back door.

 

Ron didn’t know what to think, or feel, for that matter. She was an absolute puzzle, and was quite clearly hiding _something_ from him. Yet, that afternoon had forever cemented one simple fact in Ron’s mind - they got on, almost impossibly well.

 

It just didn’t seem plausible that over the course of an entire school year he would have failed to spot her; her face hadn’t changed much from what he remembered two summers ago, and the white streak in her dark hair was just as unmissable. But then, she undeniably had been at Hogwarts during the past year, having proven the point implicitly by relaying an anecdote of a certain breakfast, when his mother’s howler had screamed at Ron, echoing throughout the Great Hall.  

 

“That,” Ron began, “was not _entirely_ my fault. Harry and I couldn’t get through the barrier!”

 

She laughed, casually, in response, “I thought it was pretty cool.”

 

Gulping, Ron had known that the high, summer sun had played very little part in the heat that descended over his cheeks at that moment.

 

“You know I need to go back.”

 

“I do.”

 

They had returned to the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron after a pleasant stroll through some close-by London streets, accompanied by an array of Muggle sweets she had purchased, and some of the easiest and honest flows of conversation his thirteen and a half years had granted him thus far.

 

“Well, there are seven of us, it’s hard to stand out,” Ron had found himself saying, his voice low.

 

“I know what you mean,” she replied, causing Ron’s eyes to snap to the side of her face. Was she actually going to reveal _something, anything_ personal to him? His eager gaze was met with a wicked grin, a sharp look and an obvious sadness in her eyes. “No, I can’t say any more than that, _but_ I _do_ know what you mean.”

 

Ron nodded, granting her a brief smile. “Okay, but I did just spend the past hour with you, and you’ve not given me much to go on.”

 

“You want me to tell you something that I don’t think I would say to _anyone_ else?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Do you see that cloud,” she pointed upwards, to where a flummoxed Ron turned and looked, where indeed a large, fluffy cloud was present. “It’s a cumulonimbus!” With an infuriating giggle and a brief wink, she turned and walked back the way they had come, choosing to ignore Ron’s numerous cries that followed her down the road.

 

* * *

 

  1. Droplets.



 

“Well, you don’t look very happy.”

 

His head jerked upwards, forcing his gaze away from the dark, glass-like water. After the most stressful end to their third year, and the, so far unorthodox beginning of their fourth, Ron seemed to find himself staring into the Black Lake more and more. He had fallen out with Harry, and although Hermione’s friendship was still present, it was often absent due to her flitting between them, determined to remain impartial within their disagreement, and thus, Ron couldn’t help but feel that this year seemed to be shaping up to be a lonely one.

 

So, of course, after over a year since her last incidental appearance, here she was again, and this time, Ron realised as he turned to face her, she was sitting up a tree.

_Of course, why wouldn’t she be sitting up a bloody tree?_

 

“Do I not?” Ron responded to her greeting, dryly.

 

“Nope,” she replied, brightly, emphasising the _p_ , before she jumped in one swift motion down from her current perch, hitting the ground with a mixture of a crunch and a thump. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

 

Ron shrugged; of course, he knew exactly what was wrong, being on non-speaking terms with your best friend tends to have a negative effect on one’s demeanour. However, with the approaching first Triwizard task looming in just under a week, Ron found himself feeling pangs of regret for the current lapse in his and Harry’s friendship.

 

“You’ve been coming down here a lot,” she said, clearly not phased by Ron’s lack of communication.

 

“Been watching me, have you?”

 

It was her turn to shrug, appearing nonplussed at his question. “Sometimes.”

 

Ron picked up a small pebble, and ran the pad of his thumb over its smooth surface, before flicking his wrist and releasing the stone. Together they watched it bounce three times over the dark, glass-like surface of the water. “Me and Harry have fallen out.”

 

“Yeah, I noticed.”

 

“Of course, you did,” Ron muttered, darkly.

 

“Well, I mean it’s hardly just me, Potter is the talk of the entire school.”

 

“Nothing new there.”

 

“True,” she replied.

 

She looked as she had done the previous two times he had seen her. Her hair was still long, Ron observed, as he ran his gaze over her. She looked, understandably, considering it had been yet again over a year since he’d last seen her face, older. She was taller, too, although thanks to Ron’s own tall frame, the top of her head barely skimmed his shoulder.

 

Turning to face her properly, Ron stopped. “Who are you?”

 

Her features contorted slightly, grimacing at his question, “I can’t-”

 

“ _Why_ can’t you tell me?” Ron interjected, determined to keep his voice calm in spite of his buried frustrations, which despite barely even concerning the girl, were presently in constant search for a reprieve.

 

“Right now, I’m someone who gets how crap it is to be lonely.”

 

Her response shook him emotionally. Perhaps, in that moment, the importance of her identity was less than her understanding, her empathy.

 

“Want to go for a walk?” she queried, pushing a section of hair, the part with the strange, white streak, behind her ear.

 

“Yeah.”

 

They began to talk as the first minutes passed, mainly of his fight with Harry. “Is it _really_ like him to _want_ the attention, though?” she asked, to which Ron forced himself to admit that no, Harry may have been granted an abundance of extra attention throughout their time at Hogwarts, but that definitely didn’t mean he enjoyed it. “You should make up with him,” she’d suggested, to which he’d sighed, but ultimately agreed.

 

Moving further around the expansive loch, their conversations shifted away from Harry and all others, eventually settling on essentially two distinct subjects - he, and she; everything from anecdotal moments to the similarities they shared, and the differences they held. “Well, I have Montgomery, my owl, but I’ve never really had a pet,” she explained.

 

“Pets are overrated,” Ron answered, before relaying a heavily censored version of the events of the night that lost him Scabbers.

 

“So this,” she gestured, vaguely, “man, that was pretending to be your rat, had slept in your _bed_?”

 

“Yeah, bloody nutter,” Ron muttered. “I’ve got an owl now, stupid tiny one called Pi-” he caught himself, mid-word, embarrassed as he inwardly cursed his sister for giving his owl such a ridiculous name.

 

“Called what? It can’t be worse than _Montgomery_ ,” she said, a mocking tone present in her voice as she spoke the last word.

 

“Want to bet?”

 

“Okay,” she said, brightly, “if your owl’s name really is worse than Montgomery, I’ll tell you something more about myself, but if it isn’t,” she fell silent, mentally deliberating for a moment, “you have to dunk your head in the lake.”

 

Ron’s voice was triumphant. “My owl is called Pigwidgeon.”

 

She blinked. “Oh, wow!”

 

“Pig, for short.”

 

“I tried to call Montgomery, _Monty,_ once _,_ but he bit me.”

 

Ron chuckled, and then squinted as a myriad of fat rain droplets began to bounce off them.“You owe me.”

 

“I do. But I’m kind of scared.”

 

“Why?”

 

She took a deep breath. “I’m a Slytherin.”

 

“Oh,” Ron replied, taken aback. Having never _really_ spoken to a Slytherin before, Ron had rarely considered the possibility that one could exist that he wouldn’t, well not necessarily _hate_ exactly, but immensely dislike. It certainly hadn’t seemed very plausible that one could be standing in front of him, especially in the form of the person he found his mind drifting toward so often. “But you’re not a git.”

 

She grinned, breathing out a deep breath she’d clearly been holding since her admission. “I’m the exception.”

 

Shaking his head slightly as they set off back in the direction they had come, their pace hurried in the downpour. Ron mumbled, just loud enough for her to hear, “A bloody Slytherin,” earning him a prompt punch on the side of the arm.

 

“Bloody Gryffindor,” she replied, mimicking his tone, just as his mouth imitated her smile.

  


  1. Storm.



 

The dormitory was half-full, and Ron was sitting discussing girls, _comparing notes,_ as his brothers would say, with Harry and Neville. The only problem being, that despite two fairly disastrous, and one the very definition of platonic, dates to the Yule Ball, neither of the three had much to share in the way of experiences.

 

And so, from a place of partial bravado, and partial thinking that he hoped wasn’t solely wishful, Ron found himself telling Neville, Harry having already heard the tales numerous times before, of his odd encounters with his mystery Slytherin.

 

“I thought you hated Slytherins,” Neville’s brow was slightly furrowed.

 

“Oh, I do,” Ron replied, smirking briefly at the memory, “she’s the exception.”

 

“Don’t raise your eyebrows,” Ron snapped, his annoyed tone directed towards Harry, who was failing miserably to conceal an obvious laugh, “it’s bloody true, and- what was that?”

 

The loud rapping had startled the three friends, their heads all swivelling simultaneously towards the window, where the outline of an owl was visible beyond the pane.

 

“Whose owl is that?” Neville asked, curiously.

 

“I’m not sure,” Ron replied, rising to his feet, sincerely hoping the unfamiliar owl had a rather large dislike of the name Monty.

 

The note was wrapped, rather haphazardly, around the owl’s leg and knotted excruciatingly tightly with a long piece of brown twine; taking Ron almost five whole minutes, two bites from Montgomery, and the assistance of both Harry and Neville, before he was finally able to open up the parchment.

 

The penmanship was somewhat messy, but there was something about the way the letters all joined together that Ron found oddly endearing. Chaotic, yet sleek; it was fitting, he mused.

 

 _I haven’t found a chance to come find you,_ the words read, _Umbridge is ‘requesting the Slytherins’ assistance’ all the time, which basically means she’s here a lot, spying on us, and she seems to know what we’re all up to all the time. I think she believes that we don’t hate her as much as the other houses. She’s wrong, most of us still hate her. Anyway, I can’t sneak off._

 

_If this gets to you okay, and it’s fine for me to send Montgomery to your room at night, then write back and he can return to me. I’ve told him to take any note he receives to the Owlery, and deliver it to me in the morning at normal post._

_If you can write back, call me ‘Adder’, (an adder is a type of snake, just like me!)._

_Ps, I hope he didn’t bite you, he’s a bit of a grumpy arse!_

 

Ron blinked, barely hearing Harry’s loudly exclaimed “Wow, she _is_ real,” as he tripped over his trunk in an overexcited excursion to locate a piece of parchment and quill.

 

Once located, he enthusiastically scribbled a brief note in return.

 

_Adder (which is an awful code name, adders are bloody horrible),_

_Are you okay? I would say that you should call Umbridge a bloody cowbag, but I don’t want you to go through her choice of punishment._

_It’s absolutely fine to send Montgomery (who did bite me, twice, by the way) to my room at night, but every time you do, you have to tell me something more about yourself.  Deal?_

_Ron, or maybe, Lion?_

 

_Lion (adders are far nicer than lions, you know),_

_I’m okay, I’m trying to stay under Cowbag’s (I like that) radar, keep my head down and hope she doesn’t bother me._

_I’ll agree to your deal on one condition, you have to do the same._

_(I love food so much I’m surprised I’m not fifty stone!)_

_A x_

 

_A (all that lack of sunlight in your cave of a common room is messing with your brain if you think an adder even compares to a lion),_

_Good plan, I wish Harry would do the same, but he seems to like pissing her off, can’t say I blame him though, it is pretty fun._

_Yes, to the food! You’d like my mum, she lives to cook for people._

_(Wish me luck - I’m trying out for Quidditch this week.)_

_L_

 

_L (if you’re locked in a room with an adder and a lion, who do you think would eat you?)_

_So I hear you’re Gryffindor’s new Keeper! Well done! Though don’t expect me to cheer for you, not openly, anyway! Slytherin are playing Gryffindor soon, Draco Malfoy spends most nights banging on about it, that boy talks about your best friend so much half the Slytherin’s are convinced he actually fancies him!_

_Your mum sounds fabulous!_

_(I love flying, but I wasn’t allowed growing up so I’m not great!)_

_A x_

 

_A (the lion would never eat me, we’d be friends and rule the world)_

_Please tell me you didn’t sing that bloody awful song about me?_

_I think if Malfoy came close to Harry right now he’d knock him out. Still can’t believe that Cowbag has banned him, Fred and George from playing. Bloody toad!_

_(I’d love to teach you to fly better, although I don’t seem to be flying very well at the moment, either.)_

_L x_

 

_L (being friends with a lion does sound quite fun)_

_Of course I didn’t! You just need to concentrate and get your head in the game more! You’ll get there! (Don’t tell anyone but I’m secretly supporting you - NOT Gryffindor, just you!) I can’t believe she banned them either, she’s on such a power trip!_

_One day, I’ll let you teach me how to fly!_

_(My favourite subject is Charms)_

_A x_

 

_A (you can be friends with the lion ONLY once you admit they are better than snakes)_

_She’s crazy, has she inspected any classes you’ve been in yet? I really hope I get to watch her inspect Snape!_

_Thanks for the support, you may be my number one fan, which sounds a lot better than ‘only fan’._

_I don’t think I have a favourite subject, Defence is alright (...if we have a decent teacher!) Hermione reckons we should start teaching ourselves defence as Cowbag is so crap!_

_(I think Montgomery likes me more than he likes you!)_ _  
_ _L x_

 

_L (well looks like me and the lion will never be friends!)_

_I saw Flitwick get inspected. Cowbag was brutal. Did I mention that I hate her!?_ _  
_ _Good luck learning defence yourselves, it’s a good idea. I know I can’t, but if I could, I would join you._

_You can keep him, give me Pigwidgeon! Is he the tiny owl that came to you at breakfast yesterday? He’s cute!_

_I like being your only fan!_

_(It’s nearly Christmas and I LOVE Christmas!)_

_A x_

 

_L_

_I don’t know why your family has had to leave school early, and I know you won’t read this...but I really hope you’re okay._

_(I wish I could show you who I am.)_

_A x_

 

The Christmas holidays had not been his happiest. His father had been attacked by Voldemort’s snake, and then his family was confined to the gloom of Grimmauld Place. Nonetheless, they’d done what Weasleys did best, they'd made do. But Merlin, he’d missed her, even when the closest contact he currently had with her was the hope that the feathers he touched on Montgomery’s back were the same ones that she also stroked, he still missed her.

 

The absence of Montgomery’s presence in the months following the Christmas holidays was nauseating. Ron had no idea why she had stopped writing to him. The D.A. kept his mind focussed, until that, too, was snatched from them, and then Sirius was taken from Harry. The world felt broken, like a storm that wouldn’t pass. He had tried to find the owl, to no avail, the number of brown owls already present in the Owlery was huge, and just like every time he’d attempted to spot Montgomery at breakfast, his searching was fruitless.

 

Lying in the hospital wing, his forearms covered in deep welts from where a number of brains - of all things, had attacked him - Ron had not long woken up from a potion-induced sleep when he spotted one final note on his bedside table.

 

_L_

_They made me leave Montgomery at home after Christmas. I don’t think we can do this anymore, it’s dangerous. They say another war is coming, and everyone around me is on the side I don’t want to be on. I don’t know what to do, but I do know if I was ever caught communicating with you, there are people that would hurt me, and you._

_It looks like you have more fans now, King!_ _  
_ _(I wish things were different.)_

_A x_

 

* * *

 

  1. Breeze.



 

It happened three times during the duration of their visit to his brothers’ shop, like the unfulfilled promise of a breeze that never quite materialises on a sweltering day. Three times his heart halted in his chest; the hint of her smile near the snackboxes, the bright white streak of her hair behind some love potions, the shine in her eyes as she stood beneath a stand of fireworks.

 

* * *

 

  1. Sunshine.



 

The smack that erupted the moment her hand connected with his cheek seemed to reverberate in the very air around them. He’d deserved that.

 

“You’ve probably been thinking about _her_ for our entire relationship!” _You’re not wrong_ , Ron thought, guiltily. “Hermione _perfect_ Granger,” Lavender spat her name as though the very words were bitter upon her tongue. On that point, however, she _was_ wrong.

 

“Hermione? No, of course not.”

 

“ _Don’t_ lie to me! In fact, don’t _speak_ to me again!” If looks could kill Ron would have disintegrated on the spot. He sighed as she stormed away, and winced as the slam of the door drove through him. Glancing around the empty changing room, the rest of the team having left to give he and his now ex-girlfriend some privacy, Ron settled himself on a long, wooden bench as he leant forward and placed his face in the palm of his hands.

 

“That was...intense.” He hadn’t heard the door open again, although it evidently had. Convinced he was seeing things, perhaps his vision was clouded in some sort of post-breakup haze, Ron forced himself to blink several times at the sight of her. “I mean I wasn’t... _intentionally_ listening or anything, but she’s a very loud person.”

 

Her hair was loose, still long and slightly curled, the slight pink on her cheeks was complimentary to her wide smile. Her eyes, he realised, reminded him of the clearest night sky, and as he rose silently, walked towards her and took her pale face in his hands, he discovered that the way she kissed him back felt like beating Hermione at chess, the warming first sip of butterbeer as it fell to his chest, a crowd screaming _Weasley is our King,_ and the first rays of sunshine after an achingly long winter. Somehow, all at once, she had become both an absolute enigma, yet home.

 

* * *

 

“I’m...scared.”

 

His forehead was pressed into hers. “I know.”

 

“I know I should have stayed away, like I was going to.” Her words nothing more than a wisp in the night.

 

“Maybe, but I’m so glad you didn’t.”

 

* * *

 

He shivered as her hand caressed the base of his stomach. “Happy Birthday,” she murmured, his mouth reluctant to leave the lips he had claimed all those weeks ago.

 

“Likewise,” he smiled as he spoke.

 

“I still can’t believe we share the same one.”

 

* * *

 

_L,_

_Please tell me you’re okay. Draco destroyed the common room during the night, I heard him say ‘Potter’ a lot, and now they’re saying Professor Dumbledore is dead. Please, please, please tell me you’re okay._

_A x_

 

* * *

 

“Won’t...be coming back?”

 

He dropped his gaze to the floor, not knowing whether he was strong enough to not promise her eyes what he knew they were pleading. “Harry...needs me and Hermione to go, this is it, this will end it.”

 

He felt both her palms meet either side of his jaw, as she forced his face upwards, demanding their eyes meet. “I understand.”

 

“You do?”

 

“This is more than you and me.”

 

“Here,” he handed over a balled up, soft something, “it’s my Quidditch jersey. I know you won’t be able to wear it, not in company, anyway, but just have it. I need you to have _something_ , that’s mine.” His eyes clamped shut before an obscure laugh echoed from him. “Do you know what the craziest thing of all of this is?”

 

She frowned, her hands now clasping the jersey as though it was suddenly her most treasured possession. “What?”

  
“I still don’t even know your name.”

 

She breathed a relieved sigh through her nose. “No, neither you do.”

 

His hands dropped to her waist, before snaking their way around her back. “How can you love someone, without knowing their name?” His question was whispered and hurried, knowing he didn’t have long with her. He never had long enough with her.

 

“Like this,” she replied, before her lips found his own.

 

* * *

 

  1. Blizzard



 

_L,_

_This year is like a blizzard but no Christmas._

_You’ll never read this but I hope you know that I miss you._

_A x_

 

_A,_

_This is the worst year of my life._

_I would give anything to find a way to tell you I need you._

_L x_

 

* * *

 

They were so close to ending it. A world without Voldemort was just beyond the tips of their fingers. He could almost _taste_ it, _smell_ it, perhaps he’d have been able to, were the scents of death and despair not already filling his lungs with every breath he took. The losses so great, and the grief that already gripped at parts of them seemed somehow tangible, as though some kind of paradigm shift had altered the very air. But they were so close...and _that_ was what he needed to hang onto, not the way his home for the last six years had, in every sense of the word, crumbled. Not the truth that he _knew,_ somehow, that before the night was done his best friend would end up facing his enemy before they could truly say it was over. Not the fact that he’d seen Fred…no, he simply couldn’t allow himself to hang onto that.  

 

Nor could he bring himself to focus on the fact he hadn’t seen her…

 

* * *

 

 

It had lasted what felt like a lifetime. The celebrations and the mourning. The joy and the grief. They went hand in hand, that was what Hermione had said. The good and the bad, his happiness, and his sad.

 

Slowly, they moved on. After the battle Harry and Hermione had each admitted their feelings towards the other. Already in love, or perhaps they simply had been all along, Ron mused; it made sense, _they_ made sense.

 

Ron didn’t know what made sense either to or for him. The only thing, or one, that ever had… didn’t even have a name. And no name, nor appearance that anybody else had apparently seen, made for something of an impossible search. Ron scowled.

 

The clearing of a throat interrupted his thoughts. “Mr Ronald Weasley?”

 

“Yes,” Ron replied, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, as they honed in on the coals of the fireplace, where an unfamiliar man’s head was currently perched.

 

“My name is Healer Kinnaird, of the Margo Peachey Ward in the Spell Damage floor of St Mungo’s. I was wondering if you were free to come over? We feel you may be able to aid in the treatment of one of our patients.”

 

“What patient?”

 

“It would be best,” Healer Kinnaird paused, as though choosing his words carefully, “if we could discuss the matter in private.”

 

“Okay, I can Floo over.”

 

“I thank you, Mr Weasley.”

 

* * *

 

The Margo Peachey Ward was located, as the Healer had stated, on the fourth floor of St Mungo’s. Ron frowned as he navigated the identical corridors, until he was finally able to locate the office of one Healer Kinnaird.

 

“Ah, Mr Weasley, you got here promptly, excellent.” Healer Kinnaird, just as Ron had seen in his fireplace, was a middle-aged man with the type of thick moustache that Ron instantly associated with the words _no nonsense._

 

“That’s alright. How can I help?”

 

“I think it may be best for you to see for yourself,” the Healer said with a gesture towards a nearby door.

 

“Okay,” Ron replied, trying to replace his nerves at this mysterious situation with a confidence he was sure was utterly transparent.

 

The door led into a single room, occupied by a single sink, and a single bed, on which lay a single occupant. Frowning in surprise, Ron stepped forward.

 

“You do recognise her, Mr Weasley?”

 

Nodding softly, Ron studied the somewhat familiar face. Dark hair, veined with a solitary streak of white, framed a pale, heart-shaped face. Only, her face, which Ron had seen possibly hundreds of times in the passing, was scarred with a number of deep, purple river-like scars.

 

“Her name is Astoria Greengrass,” Ron informed Healer Kinnaird, his voice low, “but I don’t-,”

 

“This was found on her person.” The Healer passed a small bundle to Ron. Shaking, he gazed down at his own Quidditch jersey. “Along with these. The jersey has _Weasley_ on the back, and the first of these is signed _Ron_ , it wasn’t much, but you were all we had to go on.”

 

Rational thought seemed to have abandoned Ron as his mind whizzed with uncertainty. “What happened to her face?”

 

Healer Kinnaird frowned. “The scars?”

 

“Yeah, do you know what caused them?”

 

“Mr Weasley, these scars are old scar tissue. We estimated they were caused around twelve years ago.”

 

“No.” Ron shook his head.

 

None of this was right, this girl, lying in front of him, was Astoria Greengrass, he _knew_ that - her sister had been in his year, y _ou’ll be in the same year as my-_ why did she have the notes, and the jersey he’d given to...her? _I know you won’t be able to wear it, not in company, anyway, but just have it, I need you to have something, that’s mine-..._

 

...and why did she have a face full of scars?

 

* * *

 

 

Her eyes didn’t open for a further two days. Healer Kinnaird had explained briefly that Astoria was found unconscious somewhere in the North of England. The cause of her collapse, as far as they could tell, was some sort of depletion of her body’s magical stores. Unusual, but not unheard of, and tended to affect those who cast nonverbal magic exceedingly more than average.

 

Ron chose to stay by her bed, having remembered the Greengrasses being amongst a list of casualties he had heard read aloud a number of times. If nothing else, Ron reasoned, she deserved someone there by her side.

 

Someone who had gazed at her closed eyes enough that he probably knew instinctively how many eyelashes she possessed, who, at first with a hope, and then with a certainty, that her hand was made to be held by his. Someone who knew, perhaps undoubtedly, or possibly with the help of unshakable evidence, that she was his.

 

She stirred first, with the faintest flutter of her fingers against his, before her eyes opened, strained against the harsh light of the hospital room.

 

“Oh,” she croaked as her eyes focussed upon his face.

 

“Hi.”

 

“Hi.”

 

The clearing of Healer Kinnaird’s throat brought forth both of their attentions. “Miss Greengrass?”

 

“Hello,” she squeaked, squeezing Ron’s hand in her own.

 

He explained, albeit more in depth than what he had to Ron, all about how she had been found collapsed, and the effects of the depletion of her magic stores.

 

“The curse, that gave me these,” she gestured towards her face with a sadness in her eyes as she explained, “drains me, but if I didn’t keep them hidden, I...got in trouble.”

 

“You were permanently altering your appearance, from such a young age, with potions? Glamour charms?” the Healer asked.

 

Astoria shook her head as a single tear made its way down her cheek.

 

“You’re a Metamorphmagus,” Ron stated, the certainty of his years-long puzzle finally settling into place.

 

Her nod confirmed his words, before her own voice explained her actions.

 

“I never wanted their life,” Astoria began, “everything had to be proper and perfect, but I was never very fond of _properness,_ and as you can see,” she gestured at her face, “I’m the opposite of perfect. And, then I saw your family that day in Diagon Alley, and you were wearing this scruffy top, your hair was a mess, and you were the opposite of what they wanted me to be. I liked that.”

 

“I like that, too,” Ron replied with a smile.

 

They sat in silence, her fingers laced through his until Healer Kinnaird offered further information, his words bringing forth more tears. The magical energy Astoria had exerted by constantly using her Metamorphmagus powers had caused her to weaken, both magically and physically. Because of the curse she’d endured, that according to her had been inflicted by her own, now deceased, father, was harsh and brimmed with Dark Magic. The scarring and the white streak in her hair being the physical signs, but most of the damage was internal, the curse having damaged parts of her they weren’t even sure the extent of. Her only option was to live her life without the excessive use of non-verbal magic, and a limited amount of regular magic.

 

“How can I live like this?” she whispered around an hour later, during which Ron had held her through the sobs of the reality of her situation. The realisation that she was not only now orphaned, but entirely without family, and, she admitted, the relief that Ron was still there. It fit together perfectly, Ron realised, her relief that he would stay, combined with his that he’d found her again. She was no longer an enigma, but now she felt more like home than ever before.

 

“With me, you’ll live like this with me.”

 

It would take her a while to accept herself, he knew. She was beautiful to him, and he planned to tell her so every day, but he knew that going from the extent she covered that part of herself up, to the harsh vulnerability she would feel at the exposure, would be hard. They’d manage though, that much he knew, together.

 

“You really don’t care, do you?”

 

He looked her straight in the eye. “No.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because,” he muttered, shrugging, “why should I?”

 

He cocked his head slightly to the left, watching the way her long, tear-stained lashes batted up and down as she blinked. “Oh,” she replied, “you shouldn’t, I suppose.”

 


End file.
